San Diego's Climate Action Plan

Letters in response to the March 30 editorial "Combating climate change in San Diego," for March 31, 2014

The following letters are in response to editorial “Combating Climate Change in San Diego” on March 29.

After reading the editorial, I felt very disheartened by a myopic view that the U-T Editorial Board is presenting. Every significant study on climate change shows that the economic costs of reducing emissions now are far lower than the economic costs of waiting until the climate crisis is full blown, so it makes sense to be economically prudent to act now. Whether other cities have this foresight, fiscal savviness, and muster to initiate and implement these fiscally and environmentally responsible reforms is irrelevant to San Diego’s course of action.

The tone of the U-T article is similar to a child saying, “Why do I have to do it, if they don’t?” The adult answer is, “Well, San Diego, we can choose not to, but there are harsher consequences down the road.”

The San Diego community knows how to act its age, and not settle for minimal gains and savings (which are short-term at best) at the expense of long-term economic, social and environmental gains and sustainability. San Diego should be a leader and set an example for other cities to follow. This is our contribution to the global challenge of climate change, which cannot be delayed any longer by waiting for someone else to rise to the challenge first before we take a stand.

Chris Vogt

San Diego

So our city government is going to attack all the possible sources of pollution and make San Diego into a wonderful green city with clean air and clean water. And it is going to cost us a bundle.

Why don’t we all just slow down, look around, and find a place to plant a tree. We will improve the air for all of us and make the city more beautiful, and it will cost only pennies for water.

I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads, “Drive a car? Plant a tree every year.” Planting a tree will absorb the CO2 from my car.

If you don’t have a place to plant a tree, then donate to the city tree fund, the Balboa Park tree fund, the Arbor Day Foundation, to your local school, to TreeSanDiego. Tell the mayor we want to be a “Tree City USA” again.

Carol Bain Wilson

San Diego

I commend council President Todd Gloria for his efforts to tackle climate change with practical, local solutions through the Climate Action Plan. I also commend the U-T for highlighting the important role of community choice aggregation in the city’s plan. Community choice would allow San Diego to buy from multiple energy providers, not just one.

By creating competition in our energy market, we can improve our economy, buy more renewable energy and create more green jobs. Sonoma and Marin already have community choice; San Diego can become a leader as the largest municipality in the state to implement this common-sense policy.

Kath Rogers

San Diego

I find it ironic that the U-T publishes an editorial questioning the need for San Diego’s climate action plan just hours before the Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change released its landmark report on the staggering consequences of climate change.

According to the IPCC report, cutting emissions now “increases the time available for adaptation to a particular level of climate change. Delaying mitigation actions may reduce options for climate-resilient pathways in the future.”

Climate change is a local government issue, just like transportation and crime prevention. When it affects our citizens, they will want to know what city hall has done to prepare for climate change. Local champions, like Gloria, have well-positioned our region by investing in proactive measures that respond to climate impacts and will build a more resilient community. In the name of future generations, we should be asking our regional leaders to up the ante, not scale back these commitments.

Sarah Benson

STAY COOL for Grandkids

Program Manager

Carlsbad

The council’s plan to force more energy conservation is misguided since it will achieve no global cooling, yet cause pain via costly regulations. At best, it will make us feel righteous by “doing our part” to reduce C02 production. But China emits twice the C02 as the U.S., and unless China gets on board, nothing that Americans do will have any effect.

The Earth’s temperature is affected not by what individual states emit, but by the world’s global C02 output. Between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. admirably reduced its C02 by 4 percent, which gave us moral leverage but did not reduce worldwide C02, which surged by 30 percent. The C02 jump occurred because China more than doubled its production in that decade.

Rather than impoverishing our citizens for no actual global cooling, we should study alternative ways to control the atmospheric temperature, relying upon Americans to voluntarily limit their carbon emissions and investigating geoengineering techniques, such as oceanic cloud formation, which are the only methods that have a real chance to counteract China’s C02 surge.

Jeffrey Ridgway

San Diego

When I read the great things the U-T Editorial Board said the proposed Climate Action Plan (CAP) would do, I thought, “Wonderful! It’s about time!” San Diego should be a world leader. We have the sun, the ocean, the weather — which draw and inspire us.

There’s political support to increase clean energy, promote more biking and mass transit, ratchet down energy waste, decrease asthma-causing air pollution, and cut greenhouse gases. We can become one of many points of light showing direction to the world. But, the U-T has a predictable knee-jerk reaction against the CAP, focusing on building upgrade costs. Yet, energy efficiencies can be a great investment, paying off quickly, and forever, especially in older buildings, which needlessly lose lots of energy and money.

We actually won’t be going it alone because many other California cities, including Chula Vista, Encinitas, Santa Monica and other L.A. Area cities, San Francisco and other Bay Area cities, Davis, and Sacramento, have already started.

Germany leads the way abroad, already getting 25 percent of its electricity from renewable energy — together with conservation, the only sustainable way forward.

Yes this is a global challenge, of great urgency, and it’s up to us to help lead the way because we’re among the ones who can. And may our new Republican mayor be the one to lead us all to help lead the way together.

Michael Brackney

San Diego

Failure to address climate change threatens our homes, food, water, infrastructure and ultimately whether our civilization can survive on this planet. If we don’t rise to face this challenge, future generations won’t care about the U-T Editorial Board’s excuses: We were afraid it would be expensive and we didn’t want to act first.

Transforming our society to one that runs on renewable energy is a challenge that requires the same combination of bold vision and dedication that enabled us to send a man to the moon and sequence the human genome. Todd Gloria is demonstrating the leadership that we need with this Climate Action Plan. Why is the U-T so defeatist in response?

Janina Moretti

San Diego,

It is only through local action that the challenge of climate change can be effectively addressed. This has been the case for addressing many forms of environmental degradation. The point is to limit demand, not by merely trying to limit supply.

Even if there are limited public vocalizations (and they will only be limited) in opposition to taking action to ameliorate the effect of climate change, it is incumbent upon the government, whose role is to tend to the welfare of its citizenry as well as listen to its voices, to take actions in that citizenry’s best interests, especially since the majority has already spoken that it wants action in terms of fighting the causes and ameliorating the effects of climate change.

San Diego is already attractive to businesses and potential residents for its existing natural gifts. It can only increase its desirability by becoming a leader on the social, political, and environmental issues that most challenge our society today. Todd Gloria should take his leadership role in earnest and bring San Diego into a future that finds it at the forefront of the United States (at minimum) in terms of its fight against climate change, not burying its head in the sand.

Nancy Yuen

Mira Mesa

I would expect the leading news outlet in San Diego to inform its readers with facts and expose them to the effect of global climate change in San Diego and for all humanity, while highlighting the significant economic and health benefits the city’s Climate Action Plan will bring — green local jobs in solar, home retrofitting, infrastructure upgrades, renewable and safe energy production, higher quality of life, and more.

We are at a crossroad: business as usual will lock in irreversible changes that will condemn our communities to significant sea level rise, more frequent and intense wildfires and storms, devastating drought, and the reappearance of infectious diseases we eradicated decades ago. The city has an opportunity to bring its economy into the 21st century and shore it up for decades. I applaud leaders like Todd Gloria who are willing to take a stand and bring forward sensible plans.

Alessandra Colfi

Oceanside

Contrary to the opinion of the U-T San Diego Editorial Board, I feel that Todd Gloria has demonstrated bold leadership in his plan to help San Diego meet its obligations under AB 32 and to propel San Diego to the forefront of climate action.

The U-T argument that we should take no action until other cities take action could of course be used by all cities with a predictable outcome — no one takes action, and we all suffer the consequences.

San Diegans, indeed all citizens of the industrialized world, must accept their moral responsibility to leave this planet no worse than we received it, to ensure that those who follow will not suffer droughts, floods, fires, famines, mass extinctions, and an overall loss of prosperity as they battle the effects of a drastically changing climate.

There is no longer any time to waste waiting for someone else to do the right thing. We are that someone else, and the time to act is now.

Bob Silvern

La Mesa

This issue is not political, it is scientific. The evidence of climate change is overwhelming and the scientific recommendations sound. The consequences of inaction are equally as clear, a world no one should have to live in. Most importantly the scientists point out that the sooner the action, the greater the impact and the more economical the cost. Are we willing to gamble everything that all the scientists are wrong?

To wait for other cities to “follow suit” only ensures inaction. Being a leader, by definition, means being the first to take action. The city’s plan is based on sound scientific reasoning, provides the most economic actions given the state’s climate targets and most importantly, it creates a blueprint for other cities to follow suit.

I, for one, thank Todd Gloria for his leadership.

Bob Braaton

Escondido

Please let me as a geologist bring some sanity to climate change. Fifty million years ago we had on Earth what we call PEMT, or Paleocene Eocene Maximum Temperature. All ice on Earth melted, and sea levels rose 200 feet, North and South America were separated, CO2 levels were the highest ever. And most important there were no human beings on the planet.

It lasted 60,000 years, and all life on Earth changed. We don’t know the cause but think it was caused by solar flares.

We should not penalize humans in the United States for climate change. If we look at geologic time instead of written time the Earth’s climate has changed drastically many times before man appeared and will continue to do so, and we will adapt.

George Pichel

Oceanside

It is not a matter of whether San Diego leads or whether we wait until every other city has taken action. What really matters is that climate scientists agree that the devastation of sea level rise, wildfires and intense storms, and punishing drought will be locked in within 15 years if significant changes to how we generate and use energy aren’t implemented now.

San Diego is a “go to” place for many, and being a leader in turning to sensible ways to decrease fossil fuel dependence will increase the prominence of San Diego as a livable and likable city. Let’s move forward boldly with the Climate Action Plan.

Alby Quinlan

Encinitas

Once again the U-T has demonstrated that its self-promotion as “San Diego’s cheerleader” is sadly misplaced by failing to understand that San Diegans are willing and able to lead. America’s Finest City is not afraid to lead on climate change or anything else. And leadership means looking at the hard facts of our changing climate and making decision that minimize costs and climate effects, favor economic stability, and act boldly and with foresight to position our city as a leader in green jobs, infrastructure, and energy generation and distribution for the coming decades. Move over U-T, Council President Todd Gloria has shown with this well-developed and fiscally prudent Climate Action Plan that he is San Diego’s real cheerleader.

Masada Disenhouse

La Mesa

In Sunday’s U-T editorial, “Combating Climate Change in San Diego,” you suggest that whatever actions San Diego takes to reduce greenhouse gases will have little effect. Alternatively, let me suggest that those municipalities and corporations that search for ways to reduce their use of high carbon fuels will be rewarded with lower costs which translates into higher profits while at the same time making a contribution to reducing the effects of global warming.

Since 2008, dozens of California-based organizations have placed EDF Climate Corps fellows in their facilities to save money and reduce emissions by cutting energy waste. EDF Climate Corps is Environmental Defense Fund’s innovative summer fellowship program that places specially trained graduate students in companies, universities, and municipalities to identify actionable, cost-effective opportunities to save money by saving energy. Past EDF fellows have worked in San Diego with companies including Cricket Communications, Akamai Technologies and, this past summer, San Diego State University.

These are but three examples from the more than 285 EDF fellows to date, which show how reducing greenhouse gas emissions can benefit the bottom line. Since San Diego is rich with institutions of higher learning as well as many buildings that could benefit from improved energy efficiency and smart energy management, it is clear that a scaled up presence of EDF Climate Corps in the City would benefit the local economy and environment as a whole Your editorial writer should explore proven programs to reduce greenhouse gases that are beneficial to businesses instead of wringing your hands and suggesting that whatever we do is insignificant. Hiring an EDF fellow would be a good start.